The following system is planned: There should be one main notebook, to which are connected several displays with keyboards to offer for several persons chat opportunities. This chat should be projected with a beamer on a screen.

As I'm pretty new to Linux, I have several questions:

1) Is it possible for one computer to get at the same time different inputs from different persons and to process the inputs correctly? How could this be realized?

2) How could the whole system being realized? What should be taken into account when buying the hardware?

3) The chat should include the possibility to switch to private chat rooms which should neither be projected onto the screen nor shown to the other chatters (when not explicitly included into the private chat). Is there any chat-software you would recommend for this?

4) Are there any Linux-specific problems with connecting to a beamer which are hard to manage for a newbie?

The whole solution should be as easy as possible.